Like a River Runs
by varietyofwords
Summary: Linstead. Oneshot. A year after 2x20. "Chicago is in her – its streets raised her, broke her, challenged her, and fixed her – but one look at the bend in the river, at the pink hues of the morning sky, at the bald eagle swooping down to snatch breakfast out of the rumbling water and Erin thinks she could love this place, too."


_Your light, it follows me in darkness._

 _I'm trying hard but I can't win._

 _And I've played the victim for a long, long time._

 _And I wanna grow up from the rhythm a young, from the rhythm of a younger heart, it leads just like a river runs._

\- "Like a River Runs" by BLEACHERS feat. Sia

* * *

The robins sing at four in the morning. A high-pitched, cheery song that rouses her from her slumber, that pulls her from the firm yet soft mattress where a strong arm is slung comfortably across her stomach out into the sundrenched outdoors where the morning chill nips at her bare arms and the river babbles only a few feet away from the porch.

She cringes as the screen door punctuates the robin's song as it slams shut behind her, and she quickly glances up to the loft space on the second floor where the owner of that strong arm continues to slumber. Or, at least, that is her hope because she waits with baited breath, waits to exhale a soft sigh of relief when the tweets of the robins are the only noise she hears before stepping off the porch.

She blinks wearily as her eyes adjust to the brightness of the sun; she jams her arms into the sleeves of the black hoodie she snagged off the floor as her body trembles at the whisper of the cool breeze across her skin. The hoodie hangs from her frame grazing against the top of her thighs as she walks through the dewy grass towards the water, but Erin takes comfort in the impenetrability of the fabric for the bird-sized mosquitoes already buzzing around her in anticipation of breakfast, and, maybe most of all, in the way the hoodie surrounds her with his smell.

The scent grows more pronounced as Erin reaches the edge of the water because the stronger breeze whips against her body, because she pulls the fabric closer to her and tries to fortify herself against the coming storm. Not rain or lightning or thunder but, rather, the relentless pounding of guilt and pain and all the things she wants to forget.

Except the grass under her feet isn't sand. Except the water tumbling over the rocks haphazardly strewn throughout the river's path sounds nothing like the crash of waves against the well-delineated shore. Except the goddamn robins and their cheery song sound nothing like the steady cadence of fifty police officers calling for yet another flag, another marker for a shallow grave. Except the voice she hears in her head isn't Nadia's desperate cries for help but rather her inquisitive inquiry into why exactly Erin was googling 'things to do in northern Wisconsin' while she waited for Nadia to meet her for dinner at Kuma's one Saturday night.

And her eyes sweep away from the water back to the log cabin situated a few feet away from where she stands, back to the something she had once told Nadia was nothing. The nearly hundred year old cabin seems to sag ever so slightly to the right as a result of all the harsh Wisconsin winters it has survived over the years. Yet the wooden logs lay straight, appear sound, and certainly managed to keep the ambient temperature inside warm enough that she could sleep in just a tank top and panties last night despite it being April in Wisconsin.

Or, maybe the warmth came from the homey, multi-colored quilt he had pulled up over them when they had collapsed into bed together. Or, maybe the warmth came from the man who closed his arms around her when she curled her body up against his, pressed a gentle kiss against her forehead, and promised with a sleepy smile he'd make her breakfast in the morning. A sleepy smile that became a deep chuckle that rumbled against her back when she quipped about him being a good house husband.

They can joke about Jay feeling put out now because of where they are at in their relationship – partners and _partners_. Or, maybe, because she let him drive the whole seven and a half hours it took to get here from Chicago.

And, maybe, she could be persuaded to let him drive them back even though she now knows the way – two-ninety to ninety to ninety-four to forty-three to forty-five to thirty-nine to fifty-one to eight to a small country road – because then she'll get to see his lips tug into a smile and his eyes shine bright with childish surprise when she tosses him the keys. Because then she'll get to feel like she's giving him and, more importantly, Nadia a present – or, maybe in the case of the latter, an apology – when she slides into the passenger seat.

Because Nadia would want Jay to drive, if it makes him happy. Because Nadia would want her to go to Wisconsin, if it makes her happy. Because Nadia would want her legacy to be something other than Erin looking at life from the other end of an empty bottle.

Or, so Voight and Jay and Doctor Charles have told her ad nauseam over the last year. That she has to face whatever she's has going on upstairs; that she has to stop being so hard on herself. That she has to allow herself to enjoy the sound of the robin's cheery song, the touch of spring sunshine on her face, and the sight of this cabin in middle of the woods in northern Wisconsin because Nadia wouldn't want Erin to be eaten alive by guilt. Because pushing away the people she cares about most only ends up hurting them more.

It's something Erin is still working on, still trying to accept as she turns away from the cabin sweeping her gaze from the woods to the river and pulling the black sweatshirt a little tighter against her body. As she employs those lightning fast reflexes that have helped her protect her partner and her squad so many times over the course of her time on the force to smack her hand down on a mosquito that has the gall to try and reach her skin through the fabric of her jeans.

"Big as birds," Erin quips aloud with a frustrated sigh as she reaches down to dip her hand into the river, to let icy cold water run across her skin and wash away the squashed mosquito. And her gaze continues to shift inquisitively across the landscape even as the early morning sun tries to blind her, as the April breeze blows her dirty blonde hair right into face.

It had been close to midnight by the time they had arrived here last night and so all she saw of this place was the interior of the cabin: the stone fireplace in the living room where Jay used to make s'mores with his grandfather when the mosquitos got too bad to be outside, the room lined with five or six bunk beds built into the walls where Jay and Will used to build forts when afternoon storms would roll in, the bathroom with the claw foot tub that Jay's grandfather installed for his wife in order to get her to come north of the city for extended periods of time, and the loft space with the queen sized bed where they had peeled off their clothes and fall into each other's embrace.

Their mutual exhaustion meant the exterior was left as a dark unknown with the exception of a quick gesture in the direction of the river and a promise that he'd show her more in the morning. And even as Erin steps away from the river and heads towards the two red Adirondack chairs situated under a tree just a little ways upstream, she wishes she had waited to come out here – or, maybe that those damn robins had woke Jay up, too – because now she'll miss out on Jay's hesitant smiles as he tells her about those chairs, miss out on the way his eyes shine bright because he so clearly wants her to love this place as much as he does.

And her wish grows stronger when she sits down in one of the chairs, when she tucks her knees to her chest, when her gaze sweeps upward and her eyes widen at the sight in front of her. Chicago is in her – its streets raised her, broke her, challenged her, and fixed her – but one look at the bend in the river, at the pink hues of the morning sky, at the bald eagle swooping down to snatch breakfast out of the rumbling water and Erin thinks she could love this place, too. Love it not in the abstract of a nice thought, but in the messy yet easy and unprofessional yet inevitable kind of way that she loves the man who owns this place.

The man who took one look at the calendar and one look at her face and knew she needed to get out of the district, out of her apartment, out of Chicago. The man who refused to give up on her even when she gave up on herself. The man who accepted her back as his partner without reservations or animosity or anything that might even hint that he didn't think she could do this. The man who agreed to cool it when she wasn't ready and then heat it up again when she was.

Or, at least, when she realized she was never going to be ready – not really, not for the vulnerability that accompanies love – but that if she's willing to throw her whole life away, then she should also be willing to see what it's like when all the pieces, including the ones on the backburner, are put back together. Or, at least, as put back together as it can be when Nadia will always be missing.

Because isn't that what Doctor Charles told her in that slightly patronizing tone she loathes? That one day she'd be able to look beyond the piece that will always be missing and see the whole picture again? That one day she'll allow herself to smile over the present rather than just the memories of the past without immediately feeling guilty?

"Hey," a sleepy voice interrupts pulling her thoughts and her gaze from the bend in the river to the lips upturned in a small smile, to the steaming mug being offered out to her.

And Erin cannot help the fact that her dimples concave in when she looks at Jay. Deepen when she shifts in her seat unfurling her legs and placing her feet back down into the damp grass, when she curls her hands around the black mug and takes a sip of the coffee – dark roast with just the perfect amount of sugar – as he takes a seat in the empty Adirondack chair to her left.

"I didn't wake you, did I?" She questions softly, and Erin watches over the rim of her cup as Jay shakes his head side to side before mumbling something about the robins. The comment causes her to murmur her understanding of his annoyance before she takes another sip of coffee, before the two of them lapse into silent appreciation of the morning. Of the quiet bend in the river and the pink hues of the sky and the bald eagle that has disappeared somewhere amidst the treetops.

They gravitate towards one another as the seconds become minutes. His right arm rests against the arm of his chair; hers atop the left arm of her chair. And their fingers brush against each other, against the side of his coffee mug as they tangle together. Soft, gentle, and comforting touches like the ones they offer each other in the breakroom morning, noon, and night.

"It's okay," Jay finally says interrupting her reverie. "You can say it."

"Say what?" Erin questions as she turns to look at him, as she pitches on eyebrow up in confusion. He reaches for his coffee mug with his left hand refusing to release his gentle hold on her fingers, and she can feel the smile fighting its way on her lips because he's looking at her with that slightly mischievous look he gets when he thinks he's right, when he's telling her things like 'we don't work together anymore'.

"That I was right about this being a great place to retire," he replies as he smiles over the rim of his coffee mug as he continues to keep his gaze fixed on the river before them.

"Hmm," she replies noncommittally before smacking her right hand down against her leg. The mosquito crushes under the weight of her palm, and she grimaces as she flicks it off her leg onto the grass below. "My mosquito bites say otherwise."

"I'll buy you some bug spray in town," he promises after taking another drink of coffee. And then he lolls his head against the chair so he's looking at her, so he can sweep his gaze up and down her body as his lips twist into a suggestive smirk. "And I'm more than happy to help you apply calamine lotion to your bites."

"I bet you are," she ribs with a pitched eyebrows as his face cracks into a wide grin, as he lets out a small laugh that causes her to smile in reply. There's a long pause where they sit in silence drinking their coffee, where they let their eyes linger on each other, where they let the touch of their fingers communicate all the words they cannot say.

"So what's the story with this place?" Erin eventually asks. The question causes Jay to frown because he doesn't entirely understand what she means. He told her about his grandfather and the team of mules; he told her about the works for the dam downstream and the cabin dating back to the nineteen-twenties. And so Erin elaborates gesturing with a nod of her head back towards the cabin. "The bunk beds were for the workers. The tub was for your grandmother. So who picked this spot?"

"My mom," Jay replies softly after a moment, after he sets aside the nearly empty coffee cup aside on the left arm of his chair. He shifts slightly in his chair as he drags his gaze from her face to the river running before them, and a mixture of hesitation and dread creeps up on Erin because she can tell she touched a nerve. Brought up a painful memory that maybe he's not ready to share with her.

Except Jay smiles at the scenery, smiles at the memories playing in his head. And the fingers tangled in her hers squeeze tightly in reassurance as he explains how his mom liked to sit out here in the mornings with a cup of coffee. How his deeply religious mother would say sacrilegious things about this place making her feel closer to God than any mass on Sunday could. How he bought these chairs for them to sit in after she got sick and became too weak to spend hours sitting in the grass.

And Erin doesn't have to ask if Jay misses her because she knows the look in his eyes, knows the aching pain in his chest because she feels it when she sees new cadets at the academy or when a piece of mail arrives at the apartment with Nadia's name on it or when she orders a Black Sabbath burger at Kuma's. So, instead, she squeezes Jay's hand and waits for him to speak, waits for him to feel like he can share these stories and this pain with her just like he waited – _waits_ – for her to share her own feelings of painful guilt with him.

"I wish you could have met her," he eventually says in a low voice that is barely picked up by the breeze, barely audible over the sound of the robin's song. And then he smiles, laughs as he adds, "She would have hated you."

Erin's face falls as her mouth twists into a frown, as her mind begins to creep towards thoughts about how she was born into bad news and can't seem to escape it. How Mrs. Halstead would have taken one look at her and known that Erin's bad news. How Erin very well could take Jay down with her and not even mean to just like she did to Nadia.

But Jay's tugging on her hand, tugging her attention and her thoughts back to him. Tugging her into the light of the present as he chuckles, runs his thumb against the back of her hand, and explains how his mother hated to be wrong and hated when she wasn't in charge.

"Kind of like someone else I know," he adds with another chuckle as he glances at her, and Erin feigns incredulity over the rim of the black mug as she lifts it to her lips. "She'd get this look on her face and – sometimes I think my dad let her win arguments just so he wouldn't have to see that look. Kind of like how I let you drive."

"Let me?" Erin questions, and this time her incredulity isn't entirely fake because she's the one who lets him drive. Not the other way around. And her eyebrows rise even further because she doesn't believe him as he sputters something about him not wanting to drive, about that being why she always drives. "So what you're saying is you like being a house husband more than driving?"

The grin slides off his face as he lifts the mug to his lips, but she can still see a hint of it behind the rim if she dips her head just right. Yet the smirk on her lips slides off her face when the breeze carries what he's mumbling into his cup away from her ears, when his bright eyes seem to darken for a moment. And she hesitates before asking him why exactly his mother would have hated her, but the lopsided grin he offers her in reply makes her think maybe he was joking long before he even expands on his answer.

Before he explains that his mother was convinced he was an idiot for letting his high school girlfriend walk out of his life, that she was always after him to invite Allie up to the cabin. Before he explains that he guesses bringing someone here before now never felt right, that he knows his mother would have met Erin and known immediately that she'd have to admit she was wrong.

"She would have hated that," he says with a chuckle before pausing for a moment and allowing the robin's song to fill in the silence, allowing Erin the moment to process the fact that Jay thinks his mother would have met her and known immediately that she's it for him. And then he adds, "Probably would have spent the first few hours with that look on her face and then spent the rest of the weekend dropping hints about how many kids can sleep in the bunk room. How her dining room table can comfortably seat fourteen; how Catholics don't—"

"—believe in birth control," Erin finishes with him, and Jay cocks his head to the side and looks at her with eyes wide with surprise. Not because she knew what he was going to say, but because her lips are twisted into a smile rather than a panicked frown.

"Nadia," she eventually says as though that explains everything. And then her smiles deepens so her dimples appear as she explains how after she left for the task force, after they started whatever they were doing, Nadia made some off the cuff comment about how she had first dibs on her apartment when Erin needed something bigger.

"I told her I had no plans to move and she looked me straight in the eye. Completely deadpan. And she goes, 'Erin, Catholics don't believe in birth control'. Like that made sense even though I'm not Catholic."

And then Erin pauses, frowns slightly as the realization hits her because she didn't even know Halstead was raised Catholic. Not until he got that little girl a scholarship at his old elementary school. And even then she was too deep into her own grief to connect the dots.

"She knew," she says in a gravelly voice as the words catch in her throat, as she lifts her gaze up to see Jay working through what she's saying with a puzzled expression. And then he slowly nods at her as he explains that Nadia saw him at breakfast with the monsignor of his old alma mater shortly after she started at the district, that she must have put two and two together and reached four.

"She would have made a hell of a cop," Jay states, and Erin can feel the guilt creeping up on her once more as she murmurs her agreement. She misses Nadia every day; thinks about her all the time. But she doesn't have to voice those thoughts for Jay to know, for him to squeeze her hand and remind her with one small gesture that Nadia wouldn't want Erin to look at the investigative work Nadia did on the side with sadness.

"Just for the record, I'm a lapsed Catholic so—" Jay interjects, and the comment causes the dimple on her right cheek to appear because she knows all too well that Jay believes in birth control and premarital sex and all the things a good Catholic boy shouldn't be doing.

"Good because I'm not filling up all those bunk beds or all the seats at your mother's dining room table," Erin replies before drowning the last bit of her coffee. She watches over the rim of her mug as Jay leans in his seat towards her, as he moves his face so it is inches from hers, as he looks her up and down, and as his face cracks open in a huge grin.

"But you are gonna live in northern Wisconsin?"

"Depends," Erin replies as lowers the empty coffee cup to her lap, as she starts to close the small gap between them. She shifts her gaze from side to side, from his face to the river to woods beyond and back again. "You gonna make me breakfast like a good house husband, or do I have to forage for food in the woods? 'Cause a girl's gotta eat."

"Pancakes?" He asks, and she lets the press of her lips against his be her answer. It's a quick, soft kiss. The kind they give each other in the mornings as the reach the district or at night when they're on their way into Molly's because while everyone in Intelligence knows about them, they're still trying to keep it professional. Somewhat.

Yet she is not at all surprised to feel Jay's hand cup her chin when they break apart, to sweep her eyes upward and see him staring at her, to ghost her lips against his once more. And Erin leans into the kiss ignoring the clang of the coffee mug as it falls from her lap and slams against the Adirondack chair because she's too busy being consumed by the fire of his touch.

Because she's too busy meeting the press of Jay's lips and the swipe of his tongue to care. Because she's too stunned when he pulls away to register more than him telling her that he needs to run into town to get groceries before he can make breakfast and asking if she wants to go with him.

"I think I'll stay here," she replies as Jay moves to stand, as he gathers his coffee mug and bends down to fetch hers from the damp grass near her feet. He nods in reply as the cool April breeze tousles his hair and his t-shirt, and Erin moves to stand up pulling off the sweatshirt she stole and offering it back to him.

"Keep it," Jay tells her as reaches out to tug the fabric back over her right shoulder and stop her from removing her last barrier of defense against the wind and, most importantly, the mosquitos. "Can't have my girl gettin' eaten alive by mosquitos on her birthday."

He sort of hesitates after the words come out of his mouth, and she wonder if it's because he reminded her of what today is knowing that she's always hated her birthday. Hates it even more now. Or, maybe, it's because he's not sure how she feels about him calling her 'my girl'?

Either way, she forces a small smile because today is what it is and she's not entirely opposed to that possessive nickname. A smile that deepens because he smiles back at her, because he presses his lips to her forehead and promises he'll be right back to make her the best pancakes of her life.

He makes it halfway back towards the cabin before she calls out to him in a low, gravelly voice, and she hesitantly shifts her weight a little bit from side to side as she pulls the fabric of the sweatshirt closer to her body. Shifts her gaze from the bend in the river to the beautifully rustic cabin to the expectant look on his face as the breeze whips her hair in her face and her heart tugs in a way she didn't think was possible today.

"Thank you. For bringing me here and for—" Erin trails off because she doesn't know how to say it, doesn't know how to put into words how thankful she is that he shared this part of him with her. That he knew she couldn't stay in Chicago today; that he's here trying to make her laugh. That he saved this place to share with her; that's he trying to keep her from falling victim to the dark voices in her head today. "Just—thank you."

"'Course," Jay replies with a smile. "I've always got your back, Erin."

And she smiles softly, smiles even after he's turned away and she's left watching him retreat back into the cabin before she returns back to her seat. Erin pulls her legs to her chest, wraps the sweatshirt tighter around herself, and smacks a mosquito or two that tries to sneak in as she settles her gaze on the bend in the river and the now brilliant blue sky.

The robins have stopped singing so the only noises that punctuate the peaceful silence are the screen door slamming shut behind Jay, the rev of the engine as he backs out of the gravel driveway, and the rush of the river as it flows over the rocks past where Erin sits towards the bend in the river and the man-made lake downstream. And Erin sits in Mrs. Halstead's favorite place with the cool, spring breeze ruffling against the black hoodie she's wrapped herself and the warm, spring sun hitting against her face.

Hitting against the smile and the dimples concaving her cheeks that she appear as she thinks about Nadia and her squad back in Chicago, about summer retreats in northern Wisconsin with Jay and how it's not so bad that she's turning thirty-one today.


End file.
